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India
Launches Antitrust Investigation Against Google
Tech Crunch,
August 14, 2012 |
Google currently faces a number of antitrust investigations in the
U.S. and Europe. To make matters worse, the Competition Commission
of India (CCI) just
announced
that it is also launching an inquiry into Google’s business
practices. The announcement follows a complaint by Indian consumer
advocacy group
Consumer Unity and Trust Society (CUTS) International.
That, sadly, is also the extend of the information given by
India’s Competition Commission, but an August 2011 letter from
CUTS to the Competition Commission (PDF)
argues that “Google can potentially engage in anticompetitive
activities to the possible detriment of these markets in India and
that therefore such activities in this regard need to be
thoroughly investigated by the CCI.”
In an additional press release from last year, CUTS also
stresses
that its basic concern is that “Google does not use its dominance
in the search engine/online advertising markets to affect the
growth of Indian search and advertising markets as well as related
fast growing e-commerce markets like online shopping and online
travel sites.”
According to
ZDNet’s Zack Whittaker, the CCI can levy fines of up 10% of a
company’s revenue or 300% of its net profits.
Earlier this year, the
WSJ already reported
that this investigation was forthcoming. At the time, it looked
like the investigation would only focus on Google’s advertising
services and Google hadn’t been notified of the investigation yet.
Google currently faces similar investigations around the world. In
the U.S., for example, the FTC and a number of state attorneys
general are currently looking into Google’s business practices.
The European Commission, too, has opened an investigation into a
number of antitrust-related complaints against the company. It’s
also facing similar investigations in Argentina and Korea and a
number of British politicians have
recently asked
their government to look into Google’s tax practices in their
country
This news item can also be viewed at:
http://techcrunch.com/
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